Prepaid Cards
Prepaid cards for making purchases are known in the art. A prepaid card is any form of card that has a positive balance, which can be used to make purchases.
Typical card systems, such as a standard Mastercard™, VISA™ or American Express™ card are credit cards, wherein the user of the card is given a credit limit, and is able to use the card at a variety of different merchants that accept the card, to purchase goods or services up to the credit limit amount. The user of the card is then required to pay back this amount (typically, plus charges or interest) to the company that issue the credit card, rather than to the merchant. The merchant is typically paid by the credit card issuer.
Credit cards have a wide variety of designs and limitations. At one end of the range, they can work in an extremely limited manner (at one merchant, for one transaction, or to a specific maximum credit limit); at the other end of the range, they can be quite broad (thousands of different merchants, unlimited transactions, unlimited credit).
Prepaid cards work with much the same flexibility as credit cards, and are well known in the art. Prepaid cards are issued, for example, by the same major card issuers such as Mastercard™ or VISA™ but have a “positive” balance. For example, a person without a credit history and desirous of having a credit card can instead obtain a prepaid card, by paying, in advance, a sum to the prepaid card issuer. The card can only be used up to a maximum of that sum. A person with a poor credit rating, or wishing to avoid credit cards, can deposit, for example, $1000 into a prepaid card account, and is then able to purchase up to $1000 on that prepaid card. The cards can be of one time use (used for a specific purpose, or a specific task/purchase), but are more typically of a declining balance, where the card can be used until the balance is $0. In many cases, the cards can be “filled up” by the user, by adding money to the balance, either by going in to a retail facility which allows such “fill ups”, or electronically by linking the card to a bank account or wire payment.
Visa™, MasterCard™, Discover™, and American Express™ open-system, stored-value, prepaid gift cards are marketed today to consumers through a variety of channels. Typically, companies purchase such gift cards in bulk for distribution to their employees or customers as incentives, awards, or customer loyalty benefits.
Charity Cards
There are known examples of prepaid cards for making purchases and donations to charities. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,467,684 describes a prepaid card for purchases, for one-time use, wherein the remaining cash value of the prepaid card after the one-time purchase is credited to a charity. U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,682 describes a donor card wherein, when a user purchases goods for cash, they also present the donor card, and, in lieu of change for their purchase, the change is donated to the charity indicated on the donor card.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,466,919 links a debit or credit card to one or more charities, wherein when the card is used to make a purchase, a percentage of the purchase price is added to the transaction and donated to the linked charity. A similar prepaid card is described in US patent publication 2004/0182922.
US patent publication 2997/0063020 describes a form of “charity gift card”. The card is purchased by an individual, who, and gives it as a gift to a recipient. The recipient can then use it as if it was a prepaid card, but to donate to one or more selected charities.
In addition, scrip cards, sold by charities at a premium, or purchased by charities at a discount and sold at face value, are also known, and described in US patent publication 2004/0249752.
Charity Fundraising
An increasingly popular form of fundraising for charitable or not-for-profit organizations is the charity lottery. In a typical charity lottery, individuals purchase tickets or coupons, which provide the individual with a chance to win prizes. The tickets or coupons, of course, are optional, and have been replaced of late with internet registration, for example, wherein an individual purchases a “ticket”, or, rather, an opportunity to win the prizes, online, with no actual physical ticket distributed.
Prizes for charity lotteries can be of any size or form, but are increasingly often in the form of cash, automobiles, or houses. In many instances, where the prize is a non-monetary prize, the winner has the option of receiving the value of the prize, or a significant portion of the value of the prize, in cash. Typically, if the prize is to be given in cash, a cheque from the charity to the winner is issued.
It would be desirable to have a method of providing cash to a winner of a charity lottery in a cost-effective, easy to use manner, such as a prepaid card. It would also be desirable to have a method of automatically targeting a charity winner for a donation back to the charity.